Foreign Ministry: Six hundred and eighty-nine Czechs currently in foreign jails

Some 689 Czechs were either in prison or custody abroad in December 2008, the Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday. Seventy-five of those detained were being held on suspicion of drug-related crimes, the ministry said. In 2007, the ministry registered over 1,000 Czechs in foreign prisons. The country with the highest number of Czechs in jail is neighbouring Austria, where 156 Czechs are currently behind bars, followed by Spain where there are at the moment 91 Czech prisoners. Some 75 Czechs are currently in an American jail, the ministry said. According to a spokesperson, the number of Czechs in jail abroad could in fact be many times higher, as these were only the cases that the Czech Republic’s consulates around the world were aware of.